In March 2020, the General Office of the Hunan Provincial People's Government issued the notice of the Implementation Plan for the Relocation and Transformation of Chemical Enterprises along the Yangtze River in Hunan Province, which identified three major tasks for the relocation and transformation of chemical production enterprises:
1. It is strictly forbidden to build or expand chemical parks and chemical production projects within 1 km of the riverside line, and it is strictly forbidden to expand the existing compliant chemical parks by the river within 1 km of the riverside line;
2. In 2020, close down the enterprises with outdated production capacity and fail to meet safety and environmental protection standards, and guide enterprises to relocate beyond 1 km along the river. By the end of 2025, they will complete the relocation and reconstruction tasks. The enterprise reserves appropriately;
3. Encourage the relocation of enterprises within 1 km of the river bank and not within the compliance zone to enter the compliance zone.
Recently, the Hunan Provincial Government has further implemented the plan. On June 29, the provincial government issued the "Announcement on the Release of the List of Relocation and Transformation of Chemical Manufacturing Enterprises within 1 km of the Yangtze River in Hunan Province". After the safety and environmental protection risk assessment, expert review and the approval of the provincial government, the province's riverside line 1 Within 30 kilometers, 30 chemical production enterprises were closed and exited, 38 were encouraged to relocate, and 42 were retained.
For the chemical industry, the scale of this relocation and transformation is not small. Why is Hunan so concentrated in remediation and relocation of chemical enterprises?
In fact, this is not a temporary intention of the local government of Hunan. The background of the relocation under the government's centralized plan can be traced back to the "back two into three" policy implemented by the state in the mid-1990s. As the name implies, exiting the secondary industry with heavy pollution and high energy consumption and entering the tertiary industry such as commerce and service industry is a path for urban industrial upgrading. However, after the "August 12" big explosion in Tianjin Port in 2015, the state paid more and more attention to the process of relocation and transformation of the chemical industry, and the implementation efficiency has also been greatly improved.
Judging from the map distribution of the number of relocations of various chemical plants in cities, cities with a relatively large number of relocations are generally concentrated along the river and along the river, which is consistent with the layout of my country's chemical companies built on water after the founding of the country.
In 2005, due to the explosion of a chemical plant, about 100 tons of pollutants flowed into the Songhua River, causing serious pollution of the river water and affecting the lives of millions of residents along the coast. The incident triggered national attention to chemical pollution and risks. In 2006, the Environmental Protection Agency launched the first nationwide chemical and petrochemical project environmental risk investigation. Of the 7555 chemical and petrochemical construction projects that were investigated, 1354 projects were located along the river, river, lake, sea and reservoir, accounting for 17.9%, of which 280 projects were located upstream of the drinking water source protection zone, accounting for 3.7 %. Once the waters and land near these areas are polluted, it is extremely difficult to repair, and it is also extremely harmful to society.
Therefore, the relocation of chemical plants has become a direction that government policies have to consider. After the Tianjin Port incident in 2015, it accelerated the process of centralized relocation of chemical companies.
The inland river network in Hunan Province is densely covered and the water system is developed. The relocation and management of chemical enterprises along the river has been the focus of the provincial government's work since 2011. In 2011, the "Special Plan for Heavy Metal Pollution Control in the Xiangjiang River Basin" was promulgated, and the management project of the Xiangjiang River Basin was identified as the "No. 1 Project" in Hunan Province. 39 companies.
This time, Hunan launched the “Relocation and Transformation of Chemical Production Enterprises within 1km along the River”. It is believed that the style of “Quick and Accurate” in 2011 can also be continued to promote the transformation and upgrading and high-quality development of the local chemical industry.
